Childhood Experience and Adult Depression: A Review of Studies

Depression is currently conceptualized as a multicausal disorder with vulnerabilities stemming from possible genetic, developmental, and circumstantial factors. Whereas suggested genetic predispositions and the effects of recent events (Gershon, 1989; Paykel, 1979) have been the focus of intense study, the role of developmental determinants of depression has been relatively neglected in the American psychiatric literature. This selective interest may reflect an overall theoretical shift from the former psychoanalytic emphasis on early life experience as responsible for adult psychopathology to the belief that most disorders represent an aberrant biological response to current environmental stressors. Although these possible causes of depression should not be denigrated, research on developmental factors deserves to be presented and evaluated as well.

The aim of this paper is to summarize a relatively substantial number of studies assessing the childhood experience of adult depressives that have appeared predominantly in the European literature, and therefore may not be readily familiar to the American reader. It is our hope that this presentation may revive an interest in looking at the childhood predisposition to adult disorders and stimulate research in this area. Recent reports on the high rate of childhood sexual and physical abuse in adult patients with borderline and multiple personality disorders, as well as those with self-mutilation behavior, may point the way to a reevaluation of the importance of childhood experience in the development of adult psychopathology.

The typical study described below attempts to assess the childhood experience of depressed and other individuals through the use of questionnaires given to large groups of subjects. This form of research dates back to 1894 (Stodgill, 1937) when, under the influence of G. Stanley Hall, psychologists